


Wandering Shop

by wheel_pen



Series: Miscellaneous Vampire Diaries Stories [4]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alien Anthropologists, Alternate Universe, F/M, Shoshana (wheel_pen), Wandering (wheel_pen)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 10:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3407198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stefan and Damon are brothers who travel the universe collecting information on alien civilizations. On one planet, they become attached to two girls—Elena and Shoshana (from my series “Shoshana”). This story is unfinished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wandering Shop

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things. I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate being able to play in this universe.

Stefan could tell right away that they’d landed. It had taken a while to develop this sense and sometimes he was still wrong; but more often than not, there was a sort of energy around him, vibrations from the traffic in the street perhaps or the faintest hints of noise coming through the window. As he rolled over his bed tilted slightly to help him up and his nightstand scooted forward an inch, offering him the rest of the glass of water he’d put out the night before. The air seemed more humid, another sign that they’d landed.

“Shower, please,” he requested, sipping the rest of the water. He heard the shower start in the bathroom. “I’ll have breakfast after,” he went on, rising. “Lay out some clothes for me.”

Stefan showered quickly, assisted by a showerhead that seemed to know just what angle to spray at and a towel rack that offered up a corner of towel whenever he needed it. When he finished up and left the bathroom he saw that indeed some clothes had been laid out for him—plain dark trousers and a white shirt. Another indication they’d landed—he preferred more colorful clothing himself, but in a new place it was wise to start out conservatively while you got the lay of the land. He stumbled slightly while pulling on his pants and the dresser leaned over to support his flailing hand; and when he put his boots on, he merely stood in place while two small metal spider-like creatures tied the laces for him.

At first these things had disturbed him. Often now they amazed him. Other times he found them quite normal.

When he walked into the kitchen breakfast was neatly laid on the table. “Thanks,” he told the kitchen at large, which hummed and whirled slightly as various appliances, pieces of furniture, and miscellaneous objects moved of their own accord in ways physics would not approve of. The banana stand used its hook to pour him some coffee; the sugar bowl wielded its handle like an arm and carefully dropped a spoonful of sugar into his cup. Some sort of chemistry-set clamp gripped a spoon and stirred the sweetener in as the cup spun on the lazy susan in the middle of the table. Stefan was, at least, allowed to cut his own food and put it in his mouth himself, though he had no doubt something would do it for him if he hesitated too long.

A stomping in the hallway indicated his brother was approaching and the kitchen objects hastily backed away. Damon was not very conscientious about where he walked and had a tendency to knock or kick things aside. “We’ve landed,” he announced grumpily, throwing himself down at the table. “Where’s my coffee? Can I get some coffee, _please_?” he whined.

Damon was not a morning person.

“Have you looked out yet?” Stefan asked him, trying to contain his eagerness. Damon would only mock it.

“No, of course not,” his brother answered. Soon Damon would be just as interested in exploring this new place as Stefan was; but he didn’t adjust to change well, ironic considering their situation.

They ate quietly for a few moments. The helpers buzzed unobtrusively around the kitchen, moving slowly but methodically about their tasks; except when they came near Damon, then they tended to speed up a bit, or go perfectly still as he preferred to pick up the cream jug and pour some for himself rather than letting an elaborate contraption do it.

“Did you finish reading _Wheel of Fate_ yet?” Damon asked, in a determinedly normal voice, as though it were simply another day in transit with nothing special to look forward to.

“Er, no,” Stefan confessed. “You should just take it—“

“No, that’s okay,” Damon insisted, his generosity pitched to make Stefan feel in the wrong. “I’ll wait ‘til you’re done. You don’t want to get out of order.” At one stop they had collected a series of novels about hamsters, for lack of a better word, who solve mysteries. Damon was fascinated by them, Stefan less so, though he wasn’t sure how to articulate why without offending his brother. “I’ve been doing some sketches—“ Damon went on, in a related tone.

“Of the hamsters?” Stefan asked faintly.

Damon flashed him a look that said his dubious tone had been _noted_. “The descriptions of the landscape are very good,” he corrected distinctly. “I’ve tried to recreate them, using those natural history books to help.”

“Oh, that sounds great,” Stefan replied. His enthusiasm was genuine but now tinged with guilt. Damon was an expert at eliciting such reactions. “I’d love to see them.” Stefan felt he did not have an ounce of creativity in him, so he tried to be an eager patron of his brother’s work, even though Damon’s tastes were sometimes a little outlandish. Landscapes sounded about Stefan’s speed, though. “Are you going to paint any?”

“I was planning to,” Damon said, “but now that we’ve landed…” Stefan nodded in understanding; being in a new place had a way of distracting them from their personal projects, as it should. Stefan had been planning to reorganize his sock collection, having made some preliminary charts and measurements to this end. He decided not to mention this to Damon.

After a few minutes they were both finished eating and were just toying with their coffee. There was always a certain reluctance to start a visit to a new place—the same sort of reluctance they had to start opening presents on Christmas Day, Stefan thought. Just sitting here at the table, they could imagine the event to come in ways that real life could not possibly measure up to.

“Okay, let’s go,” Damon finally said and they both jumped up quickly, heading for the front room.

Originally it had been a shop, but that was very long ago now. There was still a long counter, shelves and display cabinets crammed with goods, furniture and sculptures and knickknacks and décor crowded all around (much of which turned of its own accord to watch them pass). The front window curved outward, leaving a ledge on which to display goods to the outside, and the door stood resolutely beside it.

“Ten days,” Stefan observed. A digital readout hung above the window, counting down their time in this new place; the glare of the red numbers was out of place among the other, more rustic objects.

Both of them crowded onto the window ledge, now padded as a seat, craning their necks to see as much as possible outside. As usual, the view wasn’t great: a solid stone wall across a narrow cobblestone alley. At one end of the alley a busier street crossed; at the other, the dead end of another stone wall. Suddenly a man staggered past, intoxicated, and they both took note of his clothing.

“Video,” Stefan ordered, but a digital camera on a bendy arm, attached to a conglomeration of metal, was already recording the unknown man, including the puzzled expression on his face when he saw the door and window of a storefront that had not previously existed on the alley wall. No doubt he thought he was simply in the wrong alley, and he staggered away again.

“Typical early modern Western,” Damon judged of the setting. “Wood-based, stone is unmachined.”

“Relatively clean, though,” Stefan noted. Appearing in alleyways as they often did, he’d seen a lot of filthy piles of refuse, and this place seemed to have mainly wooden crates and some rotting plant matter. Not bad at all, really. “Mood-altering substances available.”

“Who doesn’t have that?” Damon asked rhetorically. He pulled back and gave Stefan a serious look. “You got the last two times, so I get to go out first now.”

Stefan wasn’t going to argue. “That’s right.” Early modern Western didn’t excite him much anyway; he liked futuristic societies better, with their mind-blowing technology. “You’re going out now?”

Damon nodded. “Looks like morning. I’ll take a look around.” He started to turn around and almost ran into a coat tree that had snuck up behind him. Draped on its hooks was a plain black scarf and a shapeless bag with a long strap. “Thanks,” Damon told it sarcastically, snatching the items away. He looped the strap of the bag across his chest and wrapped the scarf loosely around his neck. “I was _going_ to wear the grey, but whatever.” Stefan rolled his eyes. Damon paused for a second, facing the door, then with a quick motion he flipped the deadbolt and opened the door.

The smell hit them immediately. Manure, rich dirt, animals, rot—but not too bad, considering. There was an earthy familiarity about it, something agricultural and natural as opposed to the big-city squalor they sometimes encountered. The sounds from the end of the alleyway supported this idea: the creak of wagons, a few domestic animal noises, a burble of conversation. No raucous shouts or madly clanging bells, just a steady progression of daily life. Could make for a very pleasant visit, then.

“Okay,” Damon said, and he stepped over the threshold.

“Be careful,” Stefan warned him, as he always did. His brother didn’t reply, but Stefan didn’t really expect him to. Stefan leaned out the doorway, clinging to the frame, to watch Damon stride down the alley and out into the busy cross street. His feet couldn’t actually cross the threshold once Damon’s had, but he’d gotten adept at making the most of this limitation.

Once his brother had disappeared into the crowd Stefan pulled back inside, leaving the door open to get used to the new smells; the air in the shop tended to be a little sterile in comparison. Waiting for Damon to return the first time in a new place was always a little nerve-racking, though. The magic scarf would protect him from harm and the magic bag would produce whatever money he needed, as well as carrying whatever he bought; but this was still a foreign land, and if Damon ran afoul of some local custom they’d spend the rest of the visit hiding in the shop, bored and frustrated.

But Stefan had tasks to complete, which helped him pass the time. First, reconnaissance, or at least what little he could do from inside the shop. He positioned himself on the window seat and held a telescope up to his eye, aiming at the busy street. The traffic was mostly pedestrians, riders, and animal-drawn wooden carts, with the occasional smart buggy thrown in—no motors or mass transit. The main work animal was somewhat horse-like, but more reptilian, with shimmering scales in blue and green, and horns down the back of their necks instead of manes.

The people at least looked more or less human, on the outside anyway. Stefan hoped they’d be able to get hold of an anatomy textbook; medicine was a hobby of his and he liked comparing across the people they’d met. Dress was about what he’d expected: rough trousers, shirts, jackets, heavy work boots for the men, and modest, understated dresses for the women, which appeared to have several layers under them. Though interestingly, all the women seemed to have _split_ skirts, perhaps indicating a fairly recent but widespread change in their status towards more active members of society? Stefan didn’t want to speculate too much, though, given his lack of data.

“You’re recording this?” he asked absently. The digital camera had already turned on its bendy arm to point in the same direction he was looking and extended its zoom lens; it wasn’t that the object suddenly _spoke_ to him, but a feeling of affirmation rolled through his mind, and he knew it was indeed recording what little they could see of the busy street. “Can you tell what the shop on the left is?” Unbidden, images of bread products came to mind. “A bakery, huh? What about the one on the right?” Wooden and metal implements, rolls of cloth, bulging sacks, tidy barrels—“Maybe a general store. Dry goods.” His strange companions weren’t exactly great conversationalists; but Stefan wasn’t really speaking only to himself, either.

He put the telescope down and moved back to the doorway. “Okay, it seems safe enough,” he decided. Ten days was long enough to gather some decent information about the place. “Give me a line and anchor.” A thick metal rope wrapped itself around his waist and Stefan carefully leaned backwards out of the doorway, staring up to the top of the buildings that surrounded him. The position had taken a while to get comfortable in, but it was certainly useful. The building they were in and the one across the alley were about two stories high with few windows looking down on the gap, which meant few witnesses to their information-gathering techniques.

A small army of metal figures waited to assist him just inside the shop, eager to help. “Laser measure,” he ordered, and a small device was placed in his hand. He aimed it at the upper edge of the wall their door was in and a small red dot appeared there. The device beeped and Stefan read the display. “About sixteen and a half feet,” he noted. “Pull me back in.” The metal rope gently tugged until he was upright again, then uncoiled from him and slithered away. “Okay, let’s get the surveillance instruments up there,” he decided. “Is everyone ready? Weather?” Ready. “Dish?” Ready. “Camera?” Ready. “Alright, go ahead.”

Several intertwined cables bearing various small instruments slipped out the door and up the side of the wall until they peeked just over the edge of the building. As Stefan leaned out to watch, craning his neck upwards awkwardly, the tips of the cables blossomed like umbrellas, unfurling their sensors, gauges, and meters. “Are you receiving correctly?” Stefan asked the interior of the shop generally. It was and he ducked back inside. “Let’s see it.” A bulky cathode-tube screen in a box had lumbered forward. The picture showed black-and-white snow at first, then resolved into a full-color image of the street out front, looking down from the top of the building. Stefan panned and zoomed for a few minutes with a joystick and identified several nearby stores; he could just see the edge of some kind of market.

“Are you picking up anything with the dish?” he asked idly. A burble of street noises passed through his mind as the dish recorded them. There was no wireless communication detected, which didn’t exactly surprise him. “Weather data?” The screen switched from video to streams of numbers—wind speed, humidity, temperature, barometric pressure, various air and light quality measurements. The individual data points were useless to Stefan at the moment, but by the end they should have a nice snapshot of the climate here.

He decided to move on. “Environmental samples,” he ordered, and various small contraptions that had been eagerly gathering at the doorway marched across it into the alley. He didn’t really have to supervise them; but he found it interesting to see what they were doing. One tiny automaton carefully scraped up dirt from between the cobblestones with a miniature trowel, depositing it in a plastic test tube. Another used its pincers to yank out a small weed growing the same dirt and stuffed it whole into a second tube.

There was a snap and a squeak as one little machine jabbed at the stones with a gas-propelled chisel, chipping off some small pieces that were quickly collected. Others scuttled to the other side of the alley and broke off pieces of the wooden crates that had been piled there, and snipped samples of the rotting plant material inside them. A metal spider crept up the wall near the doorway and plucked leaves from a viney plant growing there.

The creatures chirped and beeped at each other, tiny lights blinking industriously; one larger, more stolid machine who stayed indoors printed sticky labels with incomprehensible barcodes, which Stefan dutifully pasted onto the tubes presented to him. Sometimes he wondered if this task was really so hard for a robot to do, or if they were just throwing him a bone.

“You guys can take those to lab?” he questioned, knowing the answer was yes. He kind of liked to watch them load their sample tubes onto a low metal cart, which then wheeled itself out a door deeper into the building. Damon often accused him of anthropomorphizing the creatures, but Stefan thought they just seemed so _earnest_ , like ants busily compiling food for winter.

“Anything else?” Not at the moment. “Let’s put the screen door up.” He was loathe to shut the door completely, enjoying the fresh if slightly pungent air. A wooden-framed door with fine-gauged metal screening tottered from a corner of the shop—not of its own accord, for once, but ferried by other automatons—and was hitched expertly into place in the doorway. “Secure the entrance,” he added, and a deadbolt on the screen door clicked into place. The shop had its own security system that Stefan didn’t quite understand; even though it shouldn’t take much force to break through the screen or the window for that matter, they were actually impenetrable—which had been useful on more than one occasion.

This was the point at which Stefan began to feel antsy. Damon wouldn’t be back for a while yet, and he’d done all he could to investigate at the moment. But needless to say, he couldn’t tear himself away from the shop to go organize his sock collection or do something else productive in the meantime. Instead he stretched out in a chaise lounge that scooted itself up near the window, trying to finish the book about the hamster sleuth while also keeping an eye on the outside world.

There was a bit of excitement at one point when a boy who worked at the business across the alley came out to discard a new crate full of vegetable matter and noticed the window and door that had never been there before. He scooted away before Stefan could say anything to him, though, so he just sent some more creatures out to collect the new plant samples. He hoped some of these were fresh enough for the automatons in the greenhouse to coax into new plants.

About two hours had gone by when suddenly the objects in the shop began making little noises and movements, which indicated to Stefan that Damon was approaching. Relief and anticipation passed through his mind as he looked out the window to verify, then unlocked and opened the screen door for his brother.

“Typical early modern Western,” Damon repeated as he walked in. He unwound the scarf from his neck quickly and cast it aside; an army of small copper animal statues rushed to stack on top of each other and pass the scarf up to the coat tree, which lumbered off to put it away. “Could I get a cold drink?” Damon asked in a put-upon tone. “It’s a bit warm out there.”

“What’s it _like_?” Stefan insisted eagerly. A cart rolled up bearing two glasses of iced tea and they sat down at a little wrought iron table that had pushed its way through the crowd of furniture.

Damon shrugged as though unimpressed and took a long drink. “Agricultural,” he finally said. “There’s a farmers’ market around the corner from us—“ His sketchbook appeared in the beak of a wicker bird and he opened it to a fresh page, quickly making a rough map of the nearby area. “Bakery, general store, next door is some kind of apothecary or herbalist. And the building _we’re_ in seems to be some kind of official building, a hall of justice maybe.” Stefan watched the map appear impatiently, feeling the familiar, pleasant surge of anticipation for the new world they got to explore.

“The people appear humanoid,” he put in, “but the animal and plant life look different—“

Damon glared at him for a moment, peeved that Stefan wasn’t entirely dependent on him for news of the outside world. “I _know_. The horses are sort of reptilian.” Then he reached into his bag and started to pull out the items he’d gathered. There were two pocket watches—useful for staying on schedule here—some clothing similar to what the locals were wearing, and a newspaper, which Stefan snatched up. The symbols on the page at first looked like gibberish; but after a moment they resolved themselves into letters he recognized.

“ _The Blorlock Dispatch_ ,” he read. “Blorlock?”

“Name of the town,” Damon confirmed. “About twenty thousand people, district capital. Lots of government buildings. They get business visitors, but not a lot of tourists,” he added warningly. “We’re here for the Midsummer Fair.”

Stefan noted the name for their cover story, torn between going out now himself and cautiously studying the newspaper for more background first. Meanwhile Damon was digging more stuff out of his bag, piling it on the table between them. “Look what I bought!” he insisted, shoving the newspaper out of Stefan’s hands. There was a mortar and pestle made of a smooth, heavy stone, deep blue with shots of gold. There was a vial of strongly floral-scented liquid, something that looked like a sort of flute, a necklace of sparkling stones, a pad of blank paper, some little pots of colored powder, a tiny birdcage containing a miniature wooden bird.

“What the h—l?” Stefan finally had to ask, picking it up. The bird bobbed on its perch.

“It’s for telling the weather,” Damon claimed. He stood and walked over to the window, preparing to hang the little birdcage from the frame. “Hook?” he prompted impatiently and a hook sprouted from the ceiling above the window seat. He hung the birdcage from it, steadied it, then watched it expectantly. After a moment the bird keeled over, its beak almost touching the floor of the cage and its brightly-colored tail in the air. “See?” Damon said.

Stefan did not see.

“It’s humid out,” Damon went on, his enthusiasm failing. “When it’s dry he sits up.”

Stefan did a quick mental calculation and decided it was better to encourage his brother in this harmless, even educational, pursuit. “Wow, that’s really neat,” he claimed, coming up to examine the trinket. “Is it made of a special wood, or—“

Damon saw through this, however. “Forget it,” he snapped, stomping back to the table. “I was just buying random junk in each shop.”

“No, it’s nice,” Stefan told him, speaking of the haul in general. “Are these paints?” He indicated the pots of colored powder.

“Yeah, water-based, you just blend it,” Damon replied. “Gimme that back!” He tugged the clothing away from the metal clamps of a creature who had tried to put it away. “They knew I was from out of town right away, by my clothes. Get _over_ here.” A broad-shouldered tailor’s dummy waddled over and Damon dressed it in the shirt and jacket he’d bought.

“Well, the cut’s different, sure—“ Stefan began, examining it carefully.

“The _fabric_ ,” his brother corrected. “Look at it. The fibers are wider and there’s kind of a sheen to it.”

“They notice that?” Stefan asked, surprised. Damon had a better eye for artistic things like that.

“This is what everyone wears.” Damon was already changing, discarding his previous clothes carelessly on whatever piece of furniture hopped towards him. Which could only mean one thing.

“You’re going out again?” Stefan didn’t want to add that it was _his_ turn now, because that sounded whiny; but this was implied.

“Uh, yeah,” Damon told him, unapologetic. “Farmers’ market closes at noon, and I already know my way around. You can go out later.”

Stefan was not one to pout. He was too mature for that. Damon’s reasoning was sound, and he wanted to read the paper first.

But still.

“There’s a bookstore,” Damon added tantalizingly.

“Where?” Stefan asked immediately, greatly interested as his brother knew he would be.

Damon draped a rough grey cloth around his neck as the magic scarf, hoping it would be more comfortable. “I’ll tell you when I get back,” he teased. “Frickin’ _wheelbarrow_ —“ He almost tripped on the wooden object that had rolled up behind him, and Stefan wasn’t exactly sympathetic. “Okay, I’ll be back,” he concluded. Except for—“ _Door_.” The screen door unlocked and swung open, and Damon pushed the wheelbarrow through; the door closed and bolted after him, and Stefan watched him through the window until he vanished into the crowd.

Well, at least he had more to do now. “Could I get a—“ A large workdesk lumbered up, with a chair following it more delicately, and a desklamp scuttled along behind, bounding up to the desktop when it stopped moving before the window. “Thank you.” Stefan settled down at the desk and started to peruse the newspaper, when he was interrupted by a squeak. He looked down to find that a little square nightstand had hobbled over on its wooden legs and was offering him a turkey and swiss sandwich on a plate. “Thanks,” he told it, accepting the meal. He tried not to get crumbs on the newspaper.

The headline story was about the Midsummer Fair and its impact on the local economy, particular lodging and restaurants. There were also a number of advertisements scattered throughout the paper for various businesses, all black-and-white and apparently hand-drawn. A recent rash of pickpocketing was causing concern among the citizens, particularly with the Fair beginning; and humid weather, if not actually rain, was predicted for the next few days. Fairly typical stuff, though that similarity to other cultures was in itself interesting to Stefan.

“Okay, labels,” he announced when he was done reading. “ _The Blorlock Dispatch_ , Volume 37, Issue 9,” he read aloud. “Local newspaper.” Behind him a heavy typewriter plucked its own keys to transcribe his words onto a small tag. “Analyze linguistic patterns, artwork, paper and ink composition.” A package of ring-shaped stickers came to hand and he put one on either side of a corner of the newspaper for reinforcement, then carefully punched a thin golden wire through the paper at the center of the rings. The ends of the wire he threaded through a hole in the typewritten tag. Properly labeled, he handed the newspaper over to a tall, skinny stack of wire shelves and hooks, which took it away to be further studied and filed.

“Let me see those clothes next,” he requested, reaching for the second shirt and pair of pants Damon had brought. The lamp scooted closer so Stefan could examine the material closely. “Fibers are wide and flat, with a light sheen,” he described, “yet flexible and relatively soft. Shirt is off-white, long sleeves, three buttons at collar.” He tapped at one of the buttons with a fingernail. “Buttons could be wood with some kind of smooth white coating. Or—maybe bone.” The typewriter clacked away behind him. “Okay, take some high-magnification pictures of the fabric,” he ordered, pushing the shirt aside, “but I’m going to want that back.” He pulled the pants across the desk. “Pants are dark brown, no belt loops—looks like buttons for suspenders, maybe. Button fly. One pocket with button flap on each leg, front mid-thigh. Buttons appear to be metal.”

One by one he examined the items Damon had brought back, described and tagged them, and sent them on to be further analyzed and recorded. Chemical and spectroscopic tests would be performed on the watercolor powders, for example, to determine their composition. The musical instrument would be photographed and measured from every angle, and at some point Stefan might even hear ghostly notes from it floating through the corridors, as air was forced through it to determine its range. The weather-predicting bird he left alone except for a basic identifying tag.

It was past noon when he finished and he drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk, waiting for Damon to return. He was playing with the camera when he spotted his brother on it, pushing his wheelbarrow towards the alleyway. Stefan hurried to unlock and open the door for him—he’d switched back to the solid door as the temperature rose outside, keeping the shop cooler.

Damon dropped the wheelbarrow just inside the door, struggled out of his jacket and scarf, and flung himself down in a conveniently-located chair. “It is _hot_ out there,” he complained melodramatically. A table scuttled forward with a glass of cold lemonade for him and the wheelbarrow rolled itself all the way inside so Stefan could shut the door. “I think everyone takes a siesta in the middle of the day or something,” he went on. “The streets were deserted and a lot of the shops were closed until 2.”

“Yeah, I noticed that,” Stefan agreed, indicating his monitor. “The temperature hit over ninety degrees, and of course, we know how humid it is.” He nodded towards the little bird with its tail still in the air.

Damon rolled his eyes, sipped his lemonade, and propped his feet up on an obliging footstool. “Still, I think I got some good stuff,” he prompted, meaning the wheelbarrow. “Mostly food and crafts from the market, you’ll probably want to run to the bookstore again today. They were just closing for siesta when I arrived and I could only grab a few things.”

“And where _is_ the bookstore?” Stefan wanted to know.

“Oh, it’s one street past the market, kind of a paper and printing street,” Damon explained. He began sketching a larger map of the town on another page of his drawing pad. “They’re the only bookstore, though. Not sure if people don’t read much here or what. Newspapers seem popular.”

The wheelbarrow, of course, was also more than it seemed. From the top Stefan saw a couple large vegetable items, sort of like watermelons but with ripples in their skin, and a few smaller paper packages. He knew there was much more contained in it, however. “What books did you get?” he asked, reaching into the cart. A pile of books appeared at his hand as if they had always been there. He picked up three of them, trying to decipher the titles.

“I don’t know,” Damon shrugged without concern. The propellers on a toy airplane were spinning near his head to fan him, which Stefan thought was a bit much. Damon didn’t take the heat well and didn’t let anyone forget it. “I had to plead with the girl to stay open five more minutes, and I just grabbed random books from the nearest shelves.”

Stefan narrowly avoided rolling his eyes; his brother was not nearly as systematic as _he_ preferred to be. “You know, without context, it’s hard to classify these,” he chided.

The words fell on deaf ears. “The bookstore girl was cute,” Damon mused. “I need to figure out if I can ask her to dinner or something.”

“ _Travels with Chandu_ ,” Stefan read from the first book. “Novel? Travelogue? Humor?”

“I think that one was under ‘fiction’,” Damon speculated. Stefan had no idea if he was serious or not.

“ _The History of the Maidonto Empire_ ,” he read from the next book. “Are we _in_ the Maidonto Empire?”

“Give them here,” Damon sighed.

Stefan handed him the stack of books to look through and went back to the wheelbarrow, opening the first paper packet that came to hand. “Um, some kind of cheese, I think,” he told the typewriter, who clacked out a label.

“G-d, that thing is so loud,” Damon complained. For once there was nothing that could really be altered to suit him, except for the typewriter table scooting a few inches farther away.

“This looks like… roasted nuts?” Stefan went on, business-like.

“Yeah, they’re similar to walnuts,” his brother explained. “People just popped them in their mouths and ate the whole thing. They’re sweet.”

Stefan looked up sharply. “You ate one? You shouldn’t have. You don’t know what’s in these things—“

Damon waved him off. “Magic scarf,” he reminded him. “It’s fine, I watched people first.”

Stefan sniffed at the treat, then changed his mind about tasting it himself and passed it on to be labeled and analyzed. He went through the other bound packages, uncovering strange slices of meat, bread-like baked goods, hard candies, and delicate plant material. Identifying these things was the challenge of visiting new places: sure, you might assume the fruit you bought at a market was meant to be eaten—but how? Did you need to peel away the rind first? Should the flesh only be eaten cooked, not raw? Were you only supposed to eat the gooey stuff around the seeds and nothing else? And that was only one type of food, and a fairly simple one. And you couldn’t really go around just _asking_ people without looking like an idiot—or worse, someone who didn’t _belong_. Some places were very particular about people who didn’t belong.

“Okay, this is poetry,” Damon was saying about the books at the same time. “This is a kids’ book. This was from the ‘philosophy’ section. And this,” he finished, brandishing one book proudly, “is from ‘science’—it’s an astronomy textbook.”

Stefan set the fruit he was handling aside quickly—they looked like large, blue oranges—and took the heavy book from Damon. “This is great,” he enthused, flipping through it. “Hmm, they’re more advanced than I was expecting,” he went on, pointing out one diagram to Damon. “They’ve already settled on a theory of an expanding universe—they call it the Fundamental Explosion.”

“Big Bang is definitely catchier,” Damon judged. He set his empty glass aside and stood, seemingly rested from his exertions. “Did you get the artifacts out? There’s some wooden bowls, metal utensil things, jewelry, cloth…”

“I think I got it all,” Stefan agreed. It was difficult when he couldn’t really _see_ what he was digging out, but nothing else came to his hand when he reached into the wheelbarrow. “Do you want to catalog that while I take the fruit to the lab?” Damon was so much better at classifying the artistic and cultural items.

“Good plan,” Damon decided, his tone indicating it should have been obvious. “I need a strong lamp, a big table, and a more comfortable chair,” he ordered the room at large, which began to rearrange itself for him. “No offense,” he said to the chair he’d been sitting in, when it squeaked seemingly in protest. “Like an upright chair for working, not a lounge chair.”

Stefan rolled his eyes and decided no good would come of pointing out his brother’s own anthropomorphizing. Instead he picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow—laden again with fruit thanks to the efforts of their metallic helpers, though not really full in appearance or weight—and started to roll it towards the back of the shop, the furniture inching out of his way. He turned down a dim hallway, which widened and lightened until it looked nothing like an old shop and more like a hospital. It didn’t really matter what door he entered as the objects here were constantly rearranging themselves, but he tried to follow the posted signs anyway and entered the ‘Food Science Laboratory.’

“Food for analysis,” he announced, probably unnecessary, but he found it odd not to speak. “Oh, did you grab the—“ An iron ant held up a small camera, pulled from a pocket in the jacket Damon had been wearing. “Great, I hope he remembered to activate the sound this time.”

Stefan stood before a long bench, on the other side of which were various metallic contraptions, all whirring gears, jerking arms, glowing lights. Between this bench and the next they manipulated hotplates, stirrers, test tubes, eyedroppers, and other instruments that fascinated him; he didn’t like to interrupt at the beginning of a new investigation, though, and focused his attention on the video from the camera, which was now playing on a nearby monitor. It displayed a view of the farmers’ market as seen from Damon’s pocket, complete with the sound of reptilian horses hissing, people chattering, and carts clattering past.

Other metal contraptions pulled the food items from the wheelbarrow and arranged them neatly on an empty bench while Stefan watched the video, fascinated even though Damon probably would’ve said nothing was happening yet. He was interested in the images for their own sake; and also so that when he _finally_ went out, he wouldn’t look so surprised by everything.

The slightly jerky footage showed a stand of the blue globes, under a sign reading ‘rumbas.’ “That must be these things here,” he surmised, pointing to the ‘oranges’ he’d noted earlier. On the video Damon’s hands exchanged cash for several of the fruits, then he put them in the wheelbarrow and moved on to the next stall, selling the ripply-skinned watermelons.

These were _not_ labeled, so video-Damon had to employ charm to get their name. “ _Wow, these are so huge_ ,” he commented to the stall owner in appreciation. “ _Back home they don’t get half that size_.”

“ _Oh yeah, these are champion flugelheims_ ,” the stall owner replied proudly. “ _County fair champions three years running_.”

“Flugelheims,” Stefan repeated, as best he could. Sometimes their metallic assistants had trouble picking the right words out from conversations, hence why he was there trying to interpret for them. Damon would have to review it later, since he’d been the one to actually _take_ the video; but he didn’t like being stuck in the sterile room with its ‘funny smells,’ instead preferring to classify the artistic items right away. He could do a far more thorough analysis of their style and workmanship than Stefan could, anyway.

The science was _his_ thing. Samples of the food would be tested in various ways to determine its chemical properties and find out what nutrients were in it; in a day or two he’d receive a report indicating which parts were probably safe to eat, and after that they would start trying the new foods themselves, noting the flavors and textures to add to the record. The assistants also took some of the plant matter and tried to coax new plants from it, by germinating seeds, forcing roots to develop from leaves, or nurturing clumps of cells in Petri dishes. The attached greenhouses were vast and Stefan loved wandering through them, though the self-reliant machines had their own way of doing things in this part of the shop and sometimes he felt a bit like an intruder in their efficient, automated world.

They also sequenced the genetic material of all the plant and animal species they were brought, and did other sorts of experiments to catalog the various proteins, gene expression, cellular structures, secondary compounds, and so forth. They were always generating more data, more information, and many of the concepts hadn’t even existed when Stefan and Damon were first learning about the natural world. Stefan had worked hard to educate himself about these advances, though the automatons could be frustrating teachers unless there was a book they could hand him. Damon was content to let Stefan explain the very basics to him, once he’d figured it out himself.

**

All Stefan could do was pace, and watch the clock.

He’d already completed the preparations necessary for leaving; there weren’t many and they usually happened automatically anyway—the camera and sensors retracting, for example. He and Damon had ordered rooms made ready for the girls; they were _fine_ , and Stefan knew they could easily change things once the girls were here. He’d asked around among the various automatons and sentient contraptions and no one seemed to have any objection to the girls’ presence, or any ideas about problems they might cause. He and Damon really didn’t know what would happen when the clock ran out with the girls inside the shop; but they were willing to take that risk.

They also had no idea what would happen if the clock ran out and _Damon_ wasn’t there; once he’d been incarcerated (totally not his fault, of course), but the magic scarf had repelled the police officers who tried to remove it, and Damon had made a run for it and arrived back at the shop in time. That was the closest they’d ever come—the point of a countdown clock, after all, was so you would know when the end was and be ready for it. They were forced to assume the worst-case scenario—that one of them could be left behind on an alien world while the other traveled on alone. Neither wanted to be in either position.

Damon had insisted he be the one to go out and get the girls; he was more a man of action, and he would’ve torn the place apart waiting for Stefan to return with them. So Stefan paced, and he watched the clock. They hadn’t meant to cut it so close, but waiting until dark seemed best to avoid being detained by anyone. But as the seconds and minutes ticked by, drawing terrifyingly close to the zero mark, Stefan’s thoughts were filled with second guesses, flaws in the plan, alternate ideas—all useless, of course.

Five minutes. Literally five minutes to go.

Suddenly the creatures in the shop started to stir, tensing and shifting; hope flared within Stefan. He flung the door open and leaned out, scanning the end of the alley. His view was so limited, frustratingly so—they could be right around the corner and he couldn’t see them, not that he could do anything to help otherwise.

A lamp snaked up behind him on a long metal arm and blazed its light out into the dark streets. Then Stefan could see figures running towards him, still across the main thoroughfare. The light began to blink, which Stefan assumed was to help guide the girls and Damon towards him. He restrained himself from shouting, in case it roused the rest of the area, but he hung precariously from the doorway, his feet prevented from crossing the threshold but the rest of him stretched out as far as possible.

He recognized the running figures as they drew closer and the name burst from him before he could stop himself. “Elena!” He felt metal arms coiling around his waist, not restraining him but rather holding him steady so he could reach out as far as possible towards her—another futile effort as she was obviously too far away. She was dressed in her usual clothes, a cloak flapping behind her, and one arm reached back to grip Shoshana’s hand, dragging the slower girl along. This was not how the collection was supposed to go, and Stefan could only surmise something had gone wrong—especially when he didn’t see Damon following them.

The girls rushed across the street, hitting the alley at full speed. “Keep running!” Stefan ordered, stepping back inside out of the way. “Don’t slow down!”

Elena, then Shoshana, crossed the threshold of the shop and Stefan caught them both to slow them safely. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he reassured them, squeezing tightly. The girls were out of breath, crying and gasping at the same time. “Where’s Damon?” he asked. There were only two minutes left.

“He—chased—my father—“ Elena panted, shaking her head.

“I was too slow!” Shoshana blurted in despair, crying even harder. Elena wrapped her arms around the other girl to comfort her and Stefan moved back to the doorway, scanning the street for his brother. He had to come. Even with Elena and Shoshana, Stefan couldn’t go on without him, not after all they’d been through.

He turned back to the girls. “How far behind was he—“

“Look out!” shouted a voice behind him, and then Stefan was knocked flat to the floor.

Fortunately, the person who ran him down was Damon, who laughed crazily at his narrow escape and actually hugged Stefan back—briefly—while he caught his breath. The shop door swung firmly shut behind them.

“I’m sorry!” Shoshana wailed, and Damon scrambled up to attend her.

“No, it’s not your fault, it’s fine,” Damon soothed her, wrapping his arms tightly around her. His tone suggested she was upset about something quite minor. Stefan embraced Elena again, reveling in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be leaving her behind, and suddenly Damon reached out an arm and pulled them both in close. He would have been the first to mock a group hug if it were suggested; but Stefan knew he felt things more deeply than he liked to let on.

An angry shout outside caused them all to jump apart. “It’s my stepfather!” Elena warned, fear in her voice.

“Don’t worry, he can’t get in,” Stefan assured her, even as the man pounded on the shop’s door. Other voices joined him, demanding entrance in authoritative tones.

“It’s the constable,” Shoshana reported worriedly, peeking out the window.

“We’re about to leave, it’s fine,” Damon reminded her. In a fit of temper Elena’s stepfather tried to break the window glass with a stave, causing Shoshana to squeal and jerk backwards. The man was no doubt equally surprised when the stave bounced off the window back at him without leaving even a crack.

“Let’s just wait in the kitchen,” Stefan suggested, hustling Elena away from the distressing noises outside.

“Good idea,” Damon agreed, practically treading on his heels.

The kitchen was cozy and cheerful, and with the door shut the unpleasant noises of the world they would soon be leaving fell away. “Let’s have some tea,” Stefan ordered and the automatons hopped to work.

“Here, put this stuff away,” Damon told a twisty stalk of metal on wheels, handing it an apparently empty bag from his pocket. But it was of course a _magic_ bag, holding what possessions the girls had managed to salvage in their flight—which in Shoshana’s case was a lot more, because she had more to start with and was more sentimental than Elena. Damon turned Shoshana to face him and looked her over critically. “Are your shoes wet? You can take them off,” he suggested forcefully.

“Do you want a blanket?” Stefan asked Elena, already sending off for one despite the warmth of the kitchen fireplace.

Metal creatures hovered and hopped around the girls, quivering in anticipation of doing something for them. Before she’d fully agreed Shoshana found her shoes being untied by little metal spiders, and a coat rack draped a warm blanket over Elena’s shoulders. “There,” Stefan said suddenly, and everything paused. “We’ve left. Do you feel it?” The girls shook their heads.

“What do you mean?” Elena asked.

“It’s sort of… still,” Stefan explained, feeling a bit lame.

“Let’s look outside,” Damon insisted, and they all trooped back out to the dim, crowded shop, Shoshana minus her shoes. Instead of the alleyway with its crowd of angry men, they saw nothing but blackness out the window, and the bright red digital clock read all zeroes. The silence was eerie.

“Where are we?” Shoshana wanted to know. She absently lifted her feet so soft, thick slippers could slide onto them.

“Nowhere,” Damon judged.

“How long before we… reach somewhere else?” Elena asked, uncertain of the terminology.

“We don’t know,” Stefan admitted. Somehow these mysteries had never really bothered him before, but now they seemed like huge, obvious holes in his knowledge. “A day at least, usually longer. Weeks, sometimes.”

“And then we’ll be in a different place, on a different _planet_?” Shoshana checked.

“Yep,” Damon confirmed carelessly. He took her hands and pulled her back into the bright, snug kitchen, the others following. “Then we’ll explore it, collect things, study them. Just like we did with _your_ world.”


End file.
